That Game We Never Play

A medium fantasy, slightly horror themed, sandbox.

From the beginning.

The Characters joined together in the free city of Larhold, the largest port along the Warm Sea. Meeting initially in a tavern, the soon-to-be adventurers talked with a drunk dwarf who told them of a dying dragon far to the North in the mountains separating the Empire’s Western frontier from the wild lands. The dragon was said to be laying on a fortune in gold and jewels just waiting to be taken from its dying, or possibly already dead, body. Soon after, the characters (consisting of Darius , Fighter, Halfling, Liza Longpants, and Magic User #2) fell unconscious.
Waking in the Shanghai Pits of Doom under the tavern they were drinking at the previous night, the party discovered they had been imprisoned by a mysterious party. Held each in separate cells with only clothes as equipment, the PCs had to work together to break free. Escaping the dungeon into the adjacent sewers with several other escapees (including a nerdy scholar, a scared young boy, and an unusually lucky, deadly, and mouthy prostitute), the adventurers discovered the murdered body of their dwarven informant from the previous night with a note saying “race traitor,” in dwarven runes pinned to his back with a poisoned knife. Exploring the sewers trying to find a way out, the group met up with Cleric #1, and barely missed total annihilation after encountering a Petal Thing, several albino sewer alligators, dwarf slavers, and poisonous mushrooms.

A miles long sea serpent rose from the depths of the harbor and killed itself by dashing it’s body against the cliffs overlooking the city; the characters fled, leaving the port’s citizens to fight off slime creatures that emerged from the serpent’s body.

Fleeing the city, the characters came to a [Spider Silk Farm]], where giant cave spider’s silk is collected and spun into textiles of great value. The farm was attacked by worshipers of the Spider Goddess, who sought to free the giant spider’s from their supposed oppressors. A battle ensued, only ending after the characters went down into the spider pit and conversed with the spider mother herself. A deal was made, where some of the spiders left with the cultists of their own free will, and others stayed; content with their lazy lives on the farm.

Travelling to the mountains, the party comes to the town of Pembrooktonshire, a rather wealthy community within an isolated valley on the very edge of the Empire. There, they save a group of gypsies, falsely accused of murder, from being burned to death by a vengeful Knight of Science (the Empire’s witch-hunting champions), by solving The Bumblebee Bandit Murders and presenting damning evidence against the true perpetrator of the crime; the Knight’s own squire.
After the Knight and his retinue leave aboard their airship, the party becomes embroiled in a plot within the town’s greatest festival, The Great Games. Every generation, the town’s elite family’s sons and daughters of marrying age participate in a series of grueling and deadly contests in order to determine which family has the privilege of sacrificing its daughter to the Mountain Spirits to guarantee another generation of stability, safety, and economic growth. The family of the “winner,” explained that the sacrifice wasn’t being led to the Mountain Spirits at all, but to a predatory ancient dragon. They hired the party to save the girl by providing a potion that would cause the dragon to forget that generation’s sacrifice. The party accepted, unfortunately the potion failed. The party was forced to make a deal with the dragon; find an artifact called the Eye of Agamatto within icy confines of an ancient graveyard nearby.
Delving within to the subterranean depths of the extinct demon worshiping death cult of Duvan-Ku, this time accompanied by Cleric #1 and Cleric #2, the adventurers found thousands upon thousands of crypts, as well as frightening displays of depravity and torture. Finding the Eye of Agamatto, the party accidentally freed thousands undead (zombies, mummies, wraiths, ghouls, and more exotic forms) from their slumber, along with a vampire lord. Seeking to avoid certain death, the party struck a deal with Content Not Found: null ; lead him to the surface, in exchange for free passage back to the town without fear of attack from the undead army.
Making it to the surface, promises on both sides kept, the adventurers have a few decisions to make…